This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman
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Colorado is still struggling after the devastating floods and here comes winter. Freezing temperatures will hamper recovery to this area of the country.

By Mitchell Byars

Camera Staff Writer

10/04/2013

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (click here)extended its temporary sheltering assistance program,
which helps to pay for hotel lodging for people displaced by last
month's flooding.
The program has been extended until Oct. 20 and has expanded to 304
participating hotels across the state, according to FEMA spokesman Bill
Rukeyser. There were 89 participating hotels when the flooding began.
"This is a result of vigorous effort by FEMA, the State Disaster
Housing Task Force and FEMA's contractor to get hotel and motel
operators to participate and shelter flood survivors," Rukeyser said.As of Friday, 599 households were checked in to hotels across the state under the program....

The State of Colorado believes any negligence by the fracking companies was a mistake more so than deliberate.

...At its meeting at the end of this month, (click here)the commission is scheduled
to take action against Noble Energy, Bill Barrett Corp., Marathon Oil,
ConocoPhillips, Kerr-McGee, Gunnison Energy, Laramie Energy II, McElvain
Energy, Synergy Resources Corp. and Orr Energy for cases involving
wells in western Colorado and elsewhere. It is expected to take action
later against Encana.Commission staff have reached settlement agreements
with most of the companies under which they would pay $1,000 fines per
each well, rather than the $10,000 fine per well that is possible, if
the commission approves the agreements.Bruce Baizel, energy program director for the
Durango-based Earthworks conservation group, said a fine is one way to
get a company's attention."We'll see if that increases compliance," he said.The COGCC passed the rule in late 2011 to address
public desires for transparency regarding what's injected into wells
during fracking....

It is very strange though, while the State of Colorado is slapping the industry on the wrist, the industry is mounting a campaign against the regulators and conscience citizens. I think they could EASILY afford a stiffer penalty for being NEGLIGENT! There is a difference between Oops a mistake and NEGLIGENCE! I don't believe any company practices "Oops" but they do practice negligence.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association (click here) has poured more than half a million dollars into efforts
to fight fracking moratoriums on the ballot in Broomfield, Boulder,
Lafayette and Fort Collins, according to campaign-finance reports filed
this week. The industry trade group contributed a total of
$604,683 to campaigns in the four Front Range cities, with $256,134
going to Fort Collins, $171,238 to Broomfield, $110,337 to Boulder and
$66,974 to Lafayette. Merrily Mazza, a candidate for the
Lafayette City Council who worked on getting anti-drilling Question 300
on to the November ballot in Lafayette, said she found the amount spent
by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association "amazing."

Landowners need to file a lawsuit against the companies that polluted their land!

Environmental groups need to organize the landowners and act with them to end these hideous practices that have proven to destroy water supplies and pollute land when disaster strikes.

This is outrageous. The industry uses monies to insure their profits NOT good methods and practices that prevent a greater disaster than a hot planet can render.

I would suggest the Governors that can accomplish State's Right legislation to protect our undocumented workers do so while the Congress in DC attempts to actually legislate in a meaningful way.

If California can accomplish this there are no excuses for anyone else.

California Governor Jerry Brown (C) is
surrounded by state and local officials after he signed AB60 into law
during ceremonies in Los Angeles on Oct. 3, 2013.
Reuters/Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti

The Governor signed the following bills today: (click here)
• AB 4 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) – Prohibits a law
enforcement official from detaining an individual on the basis of a
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hold after that
individual becomes eligible for release from custody, unless specified
conditions are met.
• AB 35 by Assemblymember Roger Hernández (D-West Covina) – Provides
that immigration consultants, attorneys, notaries public, and
organizations accredited by the United States Board of Immigration
Appeals are the only individuals authorized to charge a fee for
providing services associated with filing an application under the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security's deferred action program.
• AB 524 by Assemblymember Kevin Mullin (D-South San Francisco) –
Provides that a threat to report the immigration status or suspected
immigration status of an individual or the individual's family may
induce fear sufficient to constitute extortion.
• AB 1024 by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) – Allows
applicants, who are not lawfully present in the United States, to be
admitted as an attorney at law.
• AB 1159 by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) – Imposes
various restrictions and obligations on persons who offer services
related to comprehensive immigration reform.
• SB 141 by Senator Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) – Requires that the
California Community Colleges and the California State University, and
requests that the University of California, exempt a United States
citizen who resides in a foreign country, and is in their first year as a
matriculated student, from nonresident tuition if the student
demonstrates financial need, has a parent or guardian who was deported
or voluntarily departed from the U. S., lived in California immediately
before moving abroad, and attended a secondary school in California for
at least three years.
• SB 150 by Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) – Authorizes a
community college district to exempt pupils attending community colleges
as a special part-time student from paying nonresident tuition.
• SB 666 by Senator Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) – Provides for a
suspension or revocation of an employer's business license for
retaliation against employees and others on the basis of citizenship and
immigration status, and establishes a civil penalty up to $10,000 per
violation.

Opponents of a path to citizenship for undocumented workers sometimes
argue that the immigration bill now on hold in Congress would lead to
some current U.S. citizens losing their jobs. That’s not the way Medina
sees it.

Medina – the recently-retired secretary-treasurer of the
Service Employees International Union, who also chairs the SEIU's
immigration initiative – says many of the estimated 11 million
undocumented people in the United States are already working.

“They’re
paying taxes and they’re contributing,” says Medina. “What we need,
though, is to make sure that they all can be full contributors.”He
says legalizing undocumented workers will take workers out of the
underground economy and lead to job creation for American workers – not
job loss. He also says some SEIU members are undocumented, and it's time
for them to be able to stop living in fear.

A challenge for the
immigration bill, though, is to re-ignite congressional debate over the
measure. Congress may have just ended the federal shutdown, but it isn't
clear what other measures they plan to take up this fall. Medina says
immigration advocates are contacting many members of Congress today.

Medina was in Milwaukee to help honor the pro-immigrant group Voces de la Frontera.

Eliseo Medina (click here) is described by the Los Angeles Times
as "one of the most successful labor organizers in the country" and was
named one of the "Top 50 Most Powerful Latino Leaders" in Poder Magazine.
The International Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), Medina also leads the union's efforts to
achieve comprehensive immigration reform that rebuilds the nation's
economy, secures equal labor- and civil-rights protections for workers
to improve their wages and work conditions and provides legal channels
and a path to citizenship. Medina's work to help grow Latino voting
strength in the 2012 elections is widely recognized as a key factor in
propelling the 2013 debate in Congress over commonsense immigration
reform....

...Medina's career as a labor activist began
in 1965 when, as a 19-year-old grape-picker, he participated in the
historic United Farm Workers' strike in Delano, Calif. Over the next 13
years, Medina worked alongside labor leader and civil rights activist
Cesar Chavez and honed his skills as a union organizer and political
strategist; eventually rising through the ranks to serve as the United
Farm Workers' national vice president....

I wish someone would calculate the size and weight of the meteor before it entered Earth's atmosphere. This is what is left over.

MOSCOW, October 16 (RIA Novosti)

A rock (click here) thought to be the biggest fragment so far of a meteorite that exploded over Russia’s Urals region in February was lifted from the bottom of a lake Wednesday in a massive recovery effort broadcast live by Russian TV.

“This is the daddy of previously recovered pieces… See this black crust? This is a visitor from space. … The crust is very thick, [with traces of] smelting, rust and dents,” Sergei Zamozdra, a scientist at Chelyabinsk State University, told reporters at the scene.

The fragment lifted from the bed of Chebarkul Lake in the Chelyabinsk Region weighed about 600 kilograms (1,323 pounds) before it cracked into three pieces during the recovery operation.

“This fragment was quite big, and, apparently while being pulled, it cracked and split into three parts. However, the two biggest fragments weigh 570 kilograms [1,256 pounds] in total,” Chelyabinsk Region Governor Mikhail Yurevich said in a statement.

The exact weight of the three pieces combined is unknown, because the scales broke when the needle reached 570 kilograms.

After being carefully studied by scientists, the biggest fragment will be put on display at a local museum....

...Bryan Sykes, (click here) a geneticist at the University of Oxford, has announced that two pelts said to belong to the yeti match DNA from an ancient polar bear. He proposes not that ancient polar bears are hiding in the rugged Himalayas, but that so-called “yetis” are in fact brown bear and polar bear hybrids, a species as of yet unknown to science.

Dr. Sykes’ findings have not yet been published but will be broadcast Sunday in a television special on the UK’s Channel 4....

I would never reduce this initiative by Morgan to a publicity stunt. It was the sweetest offer a CEO could have made and to the people involved at the mercy of the Republicans in Congress, this is heroic.This isn't the first time Morgan has risen to the occasion. Of course, in the past it was just as self-serving as heroic during the financial meltdown of 2008, but, this was an incredible realization of devotion to the human condition in the USA that can't go unnoticed. These are the most vulnerable in our nation, but, they are also very valuable to a baseline economy. It was not a minor offer.Thank you.October 15, 2013By Ted Robbins JPMorgan Chase (click here) says it will cover Social Security and Welfare payments for its customers if the government goes into default or the shutdown continues....

What is that? It is the exhaust of a test launch of a Russian ICBM missile in acceleration to it's destiny.Where did it happen?In close enough proximity of the International Space Station to be noticed. It was no mistake. Evidently, Russia will seek to destroy the ISS if the USA engages in significant warfare that can be facilitated by bouncing signals off the station. I am quite confident the Russian strategy in warfare includes knocking every satellite out of the sky to disable any Star Wars capacity the USA has accumulated. Now, what are we doing parking missiles on Russia borders that will be disabled nearly immediately and quite possibly without a guiding vector will fall to Earth and destroy the very site it was launched from?

.."A missile launch seen from space: (click here) an unexpected surprise!" Parmitano wrote in a post on Oct. 11. One of the Italian astronaut's photos shows a curving contrail left in the missile's wake and another features a wispy cloud formed in space after the missile disintegrated.

Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces launched the missile, according to a blog post on RussianForces.org. The Topol/SS-25 missile launched from Kapustin Yar to the Sary Shagan test site in Kazakhstan.

"According to a representative of the Rocket Forces, the test was used to confirm characteristics of the Topol missile, to test the systems of the Sary Shagan test site, and 'to test new combat payload for intercontinental ballistic missiles,'" RussianForces.org wrote on Oct. 10.Russia also conducted a similar test from Kapustin Yar to Sary Shagan in June 2012, RussiaForces.org said....The USA Star Wars' capacity is basically mute. Billions and trillions of USA dollars spent on more military hardware and software has been proven to be antiquated and worthless.The picture above right is the missile moving away from the ISS in the Thermosphere, about 220 miles above Earth, toward it's target. The awkward pattern is simply the telemetry straightening the trajectory (hence the increased acceleration and unique puff of smoke) and the diffusion of the vapor into the larger air mass of Earth.And where was the nation's media? Playing with ratings and readership, that's where.And in related news...think USA Navy capacity. What was that message about launching the submarine nukes? THERE will never be enough cybersecurity that is trustworthy.October 16, 2013By Edward Kovacs...For instance, (click here) the position, course, cargo, country of origin, speed name and Mobile Maritime Service Identity (MMSI) status of a ship can be changed. An attacker can also create fake vessels – for instance place an Iranian vessel packed with nuclear cargo on the US coastline.

Cybercriminals can leverage the vulnerabilities to create and modify buoys and lighthouses. They can also create and modify search and rescue aircraft.

In addition to the vulnerabilities in the systems of the service providers, the researchers have also uncovered security holes in the AIS protocol itself.

These flaws can be exploited to disable AIS on a vessel. In a plausible real-life scenario described by the experts, Somalian pirates can make a ship that enters their sea space disappear from AIS, but they can still be able to track it.

The AIS protocol vulnerabilities can also be leveraged to fake a “man in the water” distress signal, fake a “closest point of approach” alert and trigger a collision alert, send false weather information to a ship, and launch a flood attack by sending AIS traffic much more frequently than is normal....

Edward Snowden’s revelations (click here) of NSA surveillance programs prove that
the US has abandoned the rule of law, betraying its own constitution,
whistleblower Thomas Andrews Drake, told RT.
A group of US whistleblowers and activists has present Snowden
with a Sam Adams Award for ‘Integrity in Intelligence’ in Moscow
on Wednesday....

Other recipients:

2002: Coleen Rowley

2003: Katharine Gun

2004: Sibel Edmonds

2005: Craig Murray

2006: Samuel Provance

2007: Andrew Wilkie

2008: Frank Grevil

2009: Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and Iraq War critic.

2010: Wikileaks and Julian Assange

2011: Thomas Andrews Drake and Jesselyn Radack

2012: Thomas Fingar, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who were in San Francisco, California, attending a meeting on cytokines found their trips unexpectedly cut short when the government began shutting down at midnight on 1 October. As soon as the news broke, NIH officials told the travelling researchers to come back immediately “by any means necessary”.

The organizers quickly rescheduled the meeting so that all the NIH employees could give their talks before the agency officially shut down. “They told us giving a talk after that was a federal crime,” says one NIH immunologist who asked that her name not be used, as she is not authorized to speak to the press....

11 Oct 2013 18:09 BST

Andrea Coutu said:

As a Canadian, I didn’t think this shut-down would affect me much. However, I was surprised to find out that it is affecting my consulting business. I often do consulting for US firms or organizations and I sell books on setting consulting fees and running a consulting business through a major US bookstore. Because of the shut-down, I can’t fill out the necessary paperwork about the reciprocal tax agreement Canada has with the US. So my clients are now able to hang on to 30% of my fees for tax purposes – and I have to remit Canadian taxes too. I will be glad when the IRS is up and running again. I feel for all the people in the US who are obviously harder hit by this shutdown than this Canadian who already has universal healthcare.

Recently we have just experienced the dust from the pet coke taking a life of its own during last Friday's storm, and shown is a picture taken by Anthony Martinez of the dust on 109th and Buffalo . We also have a video of the dust from the pet coke creating the same effect during a storm off the Detroit river on July 27, 2013. Click on the link below for video access.

...Coal, crushed limestone, slag from steel mills and other bulk materials have long been stored along the river, shipped in and out on barges. But these piles, they suspected, were petroleum coke, or “petcoke,” the byproduct of refining heavy tar sands oil.

In July piles of petcoke made bi-national headlines as dark clouds swirled over the Detroit River by the Ambassador Bridge leading to Canada. That petcoke was from the Marathon Detroit Oil refinery, which has expanded to process tar sands oil.

In August, Southeast Chicago residents saw similar clouds themselves. One local resident posted a photo on Facebook after an August 30 wind storm, showing a billowing thick black haze.

As in Detroit, the Chicago piles are part of the business empire of the Koch brothers, earning the nickname “PetKoch.” KCBX, an affiliate of Koch Carbon which is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, owns large parcels of land along the Calumet River.

This Koch GARBAGE is deadly. It is tiny particulates and will cause lung damage. This is a lawsuit filed in North Carolina with Duke Energy Progress,Inc.. It affects everything, air and water quality as well as home values.

Chapel Hill, NC – Conservation groups (click here) today filed suit in federal court against Duke Energy Progress, Inc., to clean up the company’s toxic coal ash pollution of Sutton Lake near Wilmington, N.C, and coal ash pollution of groundwater at its Sutton Plant. The coal ash pollution threatens to destroy the fishery of Sutton Lake, a popular regional fishing lake, and is moving toward the groundwater wells that supply drinking water for the nearby Flemington community, a diverse low-income neighborhood. The Southern Environmental Law Center filed the Clean Water Act suit in United States District Court on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the Sierra Club, and the Waterkeeper Alliance....

October 16, 2013After tens of millions (click here) of people in Japan felt the wrath of Typhoon
Wipha, the storm now races away from the country leaving behind both
destruction and death.
Winds of hurricane force lashed parts of the greater Tokyo area as rainfall reached between 150 mm and 300 mm (6 to 12 inches).The center of Wipha tracked within 50 to 100 miles southeast of Tokyo
early Wednesday morning, local time, having top sustained winds
comparable to a minimal hurricane.The combination of these extreme weather cases caused fatal
landslides. BBC New reported 14 deaths so far, many from the highly
populated Japanese capital of Tokyo. With more than 50 others
unaccounted for, its possible the death toll will continue to rise....

Rescue workers look for survivors as they stand on the rubble of a house
buried by mudslides after a powerful typhoon hit Oshima on Izu Oshima
island, about 120 kilometers south of Tokyo Wednesday morning, Oct. 16,
2013. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

A typhoon described as the "strongest in 10 years" is
closing in on Japan on a path that will take it towards the precarious
Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Japan's Meteorological Agency says
Typhoon Wipha is packing winds of nearly 200 kilometres per hour near
its centre and is bringing heavy rains.

The storm is travelling in from the Pacific south of Japan and is moving north at 35 kilometres an hour."It
is the strongest typhoon in 10 years to pass the Kanto region (Tokyo
and its vicinity)," Hiroyuki Uchida, the agency's chief forecaster, told
a news conference."It is expected to have a great impact on the traffic systems in the metropolitan area during commuting hours," he said.

All
Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines cancelled a total of 45 flights,
affecting 4,350 passengers, ahead of the typhoon, Jiji news agency
reported....

The trauma of being exposed to Republican ruthlessness proved too much for even the House staff. I thought her reaction, even in her delirium was interesting; she doesn't consider the actions of the Republicans 'of God.'

My best wishes for her and her family. I hope she recovers and is back at work as soon as she is able. It leaves me wondering what level of trauma the rest of our federal staff has experienced. I think the President needs to direct a message of gratitude from the nation for their continued loyalty.

"He will not be mocked. He will not be mocked. Don't touch me. He will not be mocked," the stenographer continued as she was led away by security officers. "The greatest deception here is not 'one nation under God.' It never was. Had it been, it would not have been."

She continued, "The Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons. They go against God. You cannot serve two masters.”

According to Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the presiding officer at the voting, Reidy "came up to the podium area beneath where I was standing and asked me if the microphones were on. I said that I didn't know. I assumed that perhaps I was chatting too much to the helpful parliamentarians around me. Then she suddenly faced the front and said words like 'Thus spoke the Lord.' And, 'This is not the Lord's work,’” Ros-Lehtinen said, as quoted by Fox News.

Ros-Lehtinen banged the gavel and called ‘order’ several times, but that did not stop Reidy from continuing with her monologue.

"I hammered to get control and hush her up,” the presiding officer explained. “She said something about the devil. It was sudden, confusing and heartbreaking. She is normally a gentle soul."

Reidy was questioned by US Capitol Police after her removal from the House floor and was later taken to a local hospital for a mental health evaluation. It was not immediately clear whether criminal charges would be filed....

Sixty-two-year-old Anthony Badalamenti of Katy, Texas, faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine after his guilty plea Tuesday in U.S. District Court to one count of destruction of evidence. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 21.

Badalamenti was the cementing technology director for Halliburton Energy Services, BP's contractor on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Prosecutors said he instructed two Halliburton employees to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP's blown-out Macondo well.

Last month, a federal judge accepted a separate plea agreement that calls for Halliburton to pay a $200,000 fine stemming from Badalamenti's conduct.

Hardly the least of the Congressional assaults was the near loss of the stem cell lines.It was a matter of less than a month by the time this was settled.

A skeleton staff at the US National Institutes of Health has struggled to keep experiments afloat. Bill Branson/NIAMS/NIH

...On 1 October, (click here)after federal budget negotiations reached an impasse and forced the shutdown, the NIH sent 73% of its 18,646 employees home. During the second week of the shutdown, the US Department of Health and Human Services put nearly 1,000 more on unpaid furlough, or enforced leave. As Nature went to press, there were suggestions that the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives could come to a deal with the presidential administration and the Democratic-controlled Senate, which could reopen the govern­ment. But during a visit to the NIH on 9 October,Nature found remaining staff members grimly working to keep crucial research efforts afloat. Notably, 1,437 clinical studies are continuing and a few trials have been able to enrol a handful of desperately ill patients. Technicians at animal facilities have stayed on, ensuring that the NIH’s 1.4 million rodents and 3,900 non-human primates receive care. And several hundred employees are allowed to maintain irreplaceable cell lines.

Yet researchers are still finding themselves severely hobbled. One of the worst problems, some say, is the ban on ordering necessary lab materials such as enzymes and chemicals for culturing cells. “We can hold out for maybe a couple weeks with what we have, then we’re in real trouble,” says one lab head from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Like all of the NIH employees who spoke to Nature, he asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to talk to the media. Many experiments are being frozen — in some cases literally — as labs decide which can continue, which must be put on hold and which have to be abandoned. “If this goes on, whole experiments will begin to crumble,” says the NIAID researcher....